::A Geek in Korea::

This is the first series of classes where I’ve finished teaching them for the week and will not have a class until after my vacation. I started telling students when I gave them homework, “I won’t see you until next month.”

Of course, they were surprised. Korean children’s worlds are built on a routine, and announcing they’d have to interact with someone new sent several of them into a tizzy. I assured them I would be returning from vacation in a month.

“Why so long? Why a WHOLE MONTH? It’s too long!”

Most of my students have no concept of how far away things are from each other. When they tell me they went somewhere far away, it’s usually accessible by car in a few hours. I had several childhood road trips that imparted on me a deep sense of how “huge” the United States was.

Koreans aren’t usually that lucky. Most of my students hope to go abroad, but the younger students probably have never been on a plane. I personally didn’t go on a plane until I was in third grade. The farthest Korean territory is only an hour or so away by plane. Grown adults on honeymoons were cheering as the plane took off when I went there. Unless you go abroad for business, the “roadtrip” option isn’t going to get you far due to the neighbors up “North” so to speak.

I told them I would be seeing several countries on my trip, so I needed time in each place to see everything. They seemed to think I could squeeze in the “Country of Europe” in a weekend.Did I mention they don’t study geography until High School, if ever?

After class, I told my coworker that the students were annoyed I was leaving for an entire month to “just see Europe”. He told me I had gone about explaining it in the wrong terms. Vacations? They don’t even understand the concept of traveling for pleasure. If they go on a “vacation”, it’s squeezed in the two days our school lets them have free time when their parents aren’t both working.

“Next time you tell them, just explain you’ll be studying. Tell them you have to go study in Europe during your vacation. They’ll completely understand that.”

I mean, I will be studying. I “get my culture on” when traveling. Art museums, historical sites, tours, lots of cultural learning going on. All of it makes me a better teacher, and a better person too. The amount of stuff I can teach from personal experience from simply having gone somewhere greatly enhances my classes. “Well, when I was there…” is a way to spark some interest in a topic.